African News
Key findings Lived poverty and lack of access to water are strongly linked but not perfectly aligned. Clean, piped, and on-compound water access all decrease as lived poverty increases. However, a notable minority of respondents with no lived poverty do lack access to clean water (15%) and piped water (27%), and 20% must collect water…
TLDR Kenyan asset-financing startup M-KOPA has reported its first-ever profit after more than a decade of operations across Africa The Nairobi-based company posted a KES 1.2 billion ($9.2 million) profit in 2024, reversing a KES 3.2 billion ($24.7 million) loss in 2023 Founded in 2011 to provide solar home systems on credit, M-KOPA has since…
In addition to a US Government shutdown at midnight on September 30, 2025, due to failure to pass a spending bill, an event largely ignored by America’s mainstream media was the expiration of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). AGOA was established by US President Bill Clinton in 2000, and gave preferential access to…
Addis Abeba — The Ministry of Trade and Regional Integration has announced that Ethiopia will commence duty-free exports to member states of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) on Thursday, 9 October 2025. The move marks the country’s first official export operation under the AfCFTA framework. Speaking at a press briefing in Addis Abeba…
Africa’s Great Green Wall project began as an ambitious plan to build a 15-kilometre-wide band of trees across the north of Africa. The African Union launched the project in 2007 with plans for the trees to extend for 6,000 kilometres through 11 countries in the Sahel, restoring 100 million hectares of land from Senegal to…
For most of the past 25 years, Chinese construction companies operating in Africa could count on generous financial backing from Chinese banks. Between 2000 and 2019, Chinese funders committed almost US$50 billion to African transport projects. Most came from Chinese development finance institutions. Six years ago, this started to change as Chinese lenders began to…
Addis Ababa/Pretoria/Durban — 7 October 2025 – The 4th International Conference on Public Health in Africa (CPHIA 2025) will take place from 22 to 25 October 2025 in Durban, South Africa, under the theme “Moving Towards Self-Reliance to Achieve Universal Health Coverage and Health Security in Africa.” Co-hosted by the Africa Centres for Disease Control…
The AI Evidence Alliance for Social Impact (AEASI) — has been launched to promote the responsible and evidence-based use of artificial intelligence AEASI is part of a broader $7.5 million collaboration with Google.org supporting AI impact evaluations. The alliance, announced at the AI for Africa Conference in Cape Town, will connect AI developers, policymakers, and…
Conflicts in Africa cannot be solved through military solutions and peace and security on the continent “demands a proactive preventative” approach, according to the UN’s Special Representative to the African Union. Parfait Onanga-Anyanga was speaking at a Security Council meeting focused on the key issues faced by Africa and cooperation between the UN and the…
Debating Ideas reflects the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing engaged, often radical, scholarship, original and activist writing from within the African continent and beyond. It offers debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and reviews and responses flowing from the African Arguments books. It is edited and managed by the…
